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The Emergence of Spacetime in String Theory (Routledge Studies in the Philosophy of Mathematics and Physics)
by Tiziana VistariniThe nature of space and time is one of the most fascinating and fundamental philosophical issues which presently engages at the deepest level with physics. During the last thirty years this notion has been object of an intense critical review in the light of new scientific theories which try to combine the principles of both general relativity and quantum theory—called theories of quantum gravity. This book considers the way string theory shapes its own account of spacetime disappearance from the fundamental level.
Émilie Du Châtelet and the Foundations of Physical Science (Routledge Focus on Philosophy)
by Katherine BradingThe centerpiece of Émilie Du Châtelet’s philosophy of science is her Foundations of Physics, first published in 1740. The Foundations contains epistemology, metaphysics, methodology, mechanics, and physics, including such pressing issues of the time as whether there are atoms, the appropriate roles of God and of hypotheses in scientific theorizing, how (if at all) bodies are capable of acting on one another, and whether gravity is an action-at-a-distance force. Du Châtelet sought to resolve these issues within a single philosophical framework that builds on her critique and appraisal of all the leading alternatives (Cartesian, Newtonian, Leibnizian, and so forth) of the period. The text is remarkable for being the first to attempt such a synthetic project, and even more so for the accessibility and clarity of the writing. This book argues that Du Châtelet put her finger on the central problems that lay at the intersection of physics and metaphysics at the time, and tackled them drawing on the most up-to-date resources available. It will be a useful source for students and scholars interested in the history and philosophy of science, and in the impact of women philosophers in the early modern period.
Emociones
by Vicente VerdúUn libro que vibra con toda la sensibilidad, la ironía y la inteligencia que caracterizaban a Vicente Verdú. En este brillante ejercicio literario y filosófico, Vicente Verdú se dedicó a contemplar con detenimiento los espacios, objetos y pequeños instantes que forman parte de nuestra vida cotidiana: las sábanas, el sexo, el momento de despertar, la atracción del parecido, los lunes, la memoria, la mentira... Aparentemente intrascendentes, se vuelven evocadores y emocionantes, y revelan la personalidad del artista y su lúcida e irónica mirada sobre el mundo. Emociones es un libro que nos hace sentir como en casa. La crítica ha dicho:«Verdú era un renacentista moderno que desde el Mediterráneo se trajo a la meseta un modo insólito de interpretar la realidad. Siempre dio muestras radicales de su compromiso con la modernidad, en los cuadros y en los artículos o en los libros.»Juan Cruz, El País
Emotion: The Basics (The Basics)
by Michael BradyWhile human beings might be rational animals, they are emotional animals as well. Emotions play a central role in all areas of our lives and if we are to have a proper understanding of human life and activity, we ought to have a good grasp of the emotions. Michael S. Brady structures Emotion: The Basics around two basic, yet fundamental, questions: What are emotions? And what do emotions do? In answering these questions Brady provides insight into a core component of all our lives, covering: the nature of emotion; emotion, knowledge, and understanding; emotion and action; emotions and social groups; emotion, morality, and art. In this concise and insightful introduction, Brady explains why we are often better off as a result of emotion rather than reason being in the driving seat, as our lives, both individual and social, would be significantly impoverished without the emotions. With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, Emotion: The Basics is an ideal starting point for anyone seeking a full introduction to the philosophical study of emotion.
Emotion in Sports: Philosophical Perspectives (Ethics and Sport)
by Yunus TuncelEmotion is central to human character, infiltrating our physiological functions and our mental constitution. In sport, athletes feel emotion in specific ways, from joy to anger and despair. This is the first book to examine emotion in sport from a philosophical perspective, building on concepts developed by ancient Greek and modern philosophers. For instance, how is Aristotle’s concept of catharsis applied to the sports field? How about power as advanced by Nietzsche, or existentialism as discussed by Kierkegaard? Emotion in Sports explores the philosophical framework for the expression of emotion and relates it to our psychological understanding, from the perspective of both athlete and spectator. A fascinating and useful read for students, researchers, scholars, and practitioners in the fields of sport sciences, philosophy, and psychology.
The Emotional Mind: The Affective Roots of Culture and Cognition
by Stephen T. AsmaFor 200 million years before humans developed a capacity to reason, the emotional centers of the brain were hard at work. Stephen Asma and Rami Gabriel help us understand the evolution of the mind by exploring this more primal capability that we share with other animals: the power to feel, which is the root of so much that makes us uniquely human.
Emotions, Protest, Democracy: Collective Identities in Contemporary Spain (Routledge Advances in Democratic Theory)
by Emmy EklundhWith the rise of both populist parties and social movements in Europe, the role of emotions in politics has once again become key to political debates, and particularly in the Spanish case. Since 2011, the Spanish political landscape has been redrawn. What started as the Indignados movement has now transformed into the party Podemos, which claims to address important deficits in popular representation. By creating space for emotions, the movement and the party have made this a key feature of their political subjectivity. Emotions and affect, however, are often viewed as either purely instrumental to political goals or completely detached from ‘real’ politics. This book argues that the hierarchy between the rational and the emotional works to sediment exclusionary practices in politics, deeming some forms of political expressions more worthy than others. Using radical theories of democracy, Emmy Eklundh masterfully tackles this problem and constructs an analytical framework based on the concept of visceral ties, which sees emotions and affect as constitutive of any collective identity. She later demonstrates empirically, using both ethnographic method and social media analysis, how the movement Indignados is different from the political party Podemos with regards to emotions and affect, but that both are suffering from a broader devaluation of emotional expressions in political life. Bridging social and political theory, Emotions, Protest, Democracy: Collective Identities in Contemporary Spain provides one of the few in-depth accounts of the transition from the movement Indignados to party Podemos, and the role of emotions in contemporary Spanish and European politics.
The Empire and the Five Kings: America's Abdication and the Fate of the World
by Bernard-Henri LévyOne of the West’s leading intellectuals offers a provocative look at America’s withdrawal from world leadership and the rising powers who seek to fill the vacuum left behind.The United States was once the hope of the world, a beacon of freedom and the defender of liberal democracy. Nations and peoples on all continents looked to America to stand up for the values that created the Western worldand to oppose autocracy and repression. Even when America did not live up to its ideals, it still recognized their importance, at home and abroad.But as Bernard-Henri Lévy lays bare in this powerful and disturbing analysis of the world today, America is retreating from its traditional leadership role, and in its place have come five ambitious powers, former empires eager to assert their primacy and influence. Lévy shows how these five—Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, and Sunni radical Islamism—are taking steps to undermine the liberal values that have been a hallmark of Western civilization.The Empire and the Five Kings is a cri de coeur that draws upon lessons from history and the eternal touchstones of human culture to reveal the stakes facing the West as America retreats from its leadership role, a process that did not begin with Donald Trump's presidency and is not likely to end with him. The crisis is one whose roots can be found as far back as antiquity and whose resolution will require the West to find a new way forward if its principles and values are to survive.As seen on Real Time with Bill Maher (2/22/2019) and Fareed Zakaria GPS (2/17/2019).
Empire of Friends: Soviet Power and Socialist Internationalism in Cold War Czechoslovakia
by Rachel ApplebaumThe familiar story of Soviet power in Cold War Eastern Europe focuses on political repression and military force. But in Empire of Friends, Rachel Applebaum shows how the Soviet Union simultaneously promoted a policy of transnational friendship with its Eastern Bloc satellites to create a cohesive socialist world. This friendship project resulted in a new type of imperial control based on cross-border contacts between ordinary citizens. In a new and fascinating story of cultural diplomacy, interpersonal relations, and the trade of consumer-goods, Applebaum tracks the rise and fall of the friendship project in Czechoslovakia, as the country evolved after World War II from the Soviet Union's most loyal satellite to its most rebellious.Throughout Eastern Europe, the friendship project shaped the most intimate aspects of people's lives, influencing everything from what they wore to where they traveled to whom they married. Applebaum argues that in Czechoslovakia, socialist friendship was surprisingly durable, capable of surviving the ravages of Stalinism and the Soviet invasion that crushed the 1968 Prague Spring. Eventually, the project became so successful that it undermined the very alliance it was designed to support: as Soviets and Czechoslovaks got to know one another, they discovered important cultural and political differences that contradicted propaganda about a cohesive socialist world. Empire of Friends reveals that the sphere of everyday life was central to the construction of the transnational socialist system in Eastern Europe—and, ultimately, its collapse.
Empowering Citizens, Engaging the Public: Political Science for the 21st Century
by Rainer EisfeldThis book is the first comprehensive study to respond to the ongoing debates on political sciences’ fragmentation, doubtful relevance, and disconnect with the larger public. It explores the implications of the argument that political science ought to become more topic-driven, more relevant and more comprehensible for "lay" audiences. Consequences would include evolving a culture of public engagement, challenging tendencies toward liars’ rule, and emphasizing the role of “large” themes in academic education and research, the latter being identified as those areas where severe democratic erosion is occurring – such as escalating income and wealth disparities pushing democracy towards plutocracy, ubiquitous change triggering insecurity and aggression, racist prejudice polarizing societies, and counter-terrorism strategies subverting civil liberties. Political science needs to address these pressing problems ahead of other issues by in-depth research and broadly accessible public narratives, including solution-orientated normative notions. This need provides the final justification for evolving a discipline where problems would take priority over methods and public relevance over sophisticated specialization.
The Enchantments of Mammon: How Capitalism Became the Religion of Modernity
by Eugene McCarraherEugene McCarraher challenges the conventional view of capitalism as a force for disenchantment. From Puritan and evangelical valorizations of profit to the heavenly Fordist city, the mystically animated corporation, and the deification of the market, capitalism has hijacked our intrinsic longing for divinity, laying hold to our souls.
Encontrando el Alma: Sobrevivir a la muerte
by Walter ParksLos humanos sabemos que vamos a morir. Esperamos tener alguna forma de vida después de la muerte. Pero sabemos que nuestros cuerpos se descomponen. Por lo tanto, para tener una vida después de la muerte debe haber alguna parte de nosotros que sobreviva a la muerte. Hemos llegado a creer en el concepto del alma. Este libro describe una posible explicación científica para el alma y describe las pruebas en curso por la NASA y otros que pueden conducir a la prueba de algunos de los elementos de las especulaciones científicas descritas en este libro.
The End Is Always Near: Apocalyptic Moments, from the Bronze Age Collapse to Nuclear Near Misses
by Dan CarlinThe creator of the wildly popular award-winning podcast Hardcore History looks at some of the apocalyptic moments from the past as a way to frame the challenges of the future.Do tough times create tougher people? Can humanity handle the power of its weapons without destroying itself? Will human technology or capabilities ever peak or regress? No one knows the answers to such questions, but no one asks them in a more interesting way than Dan Carlin.In The End is Always Near, Dan Carlin looks at questions and historical events that force us to consider what sounds like fantasy; that we might suffer the same fate that all previous eras did. Will our world ever become a ruin for future archaeologists to dig up and explore? The questions themselves are both philosophical and like something out of The Twilight Zone.Combining his trademark mix of storytelling, history and weirdness Dan Carlin connects the past and future in fascinating and colorful ways. At the same time the questions he asks us to consider involve the most important issue imaginable: human survival. From the collapse of the Bronze Age to the challenges of the nuclear era the issue has hung over humanity like a persistent Sword of Damocles.Inspired by his podcast, The End is Always Near challenges the way we look at the past and ourselves. In this absorbing compendium, Carlin embarks on a whole new set of stories and major cliffhangers that will keep readers enthralled. Idiosyncratic and erudite, offbeat yet profound, The End is Always Near examines issues that are rarely presented, and makes the past immediately relevant to our very turbulent present.
The End of Literature, Hegel, and the Contemporary Novel
by Francesco CampanaThis book explores the concept of the end of literature through the lens of Hegel's philosophy of art. In his version of Hegel's 'end of art' thesis, Arthur Danto claimed that contemporary art has abandoned its distinctive sensitive and emotive features to become increasingly reflective. Contemporary art has become a question of philosophical reflection on itself and on the world, thus producing an epochal change in art history. The core idea of this book is that this thesis applies quite well to all forms of art except one, namely literature: literature resists its 'end'.Unlike other arts, which have experienced significant fractures in the contemporary world, Campana proposes that literature has always known how to renew itself in order to retain its distinguishing features, so much so that in a way it has always come to terms with its own end. Analysing the distinct character of literature, this book proposes a new and original interpretation of the 'end of art' thesis, showing how it can be used as a key conceptual framework to understand the contemporary novel.
The End of Morality: Taking Moral Abolitionism Seriously
by Richard Joyce Richard GarnerAccording to the moral error theorist, all moral judgments are mistaken. The world just doesn’t contain the properties and relations necessary for these judgments to be true. But what should we actually do if we decided that we are in this radical and unsettling predicament—that morality is just a widespread and heartfelt illusion? One suggestion is to eliminate all talk and thought of morality (abolitionism). Another is to carry on believing it anyway (conservationism). And yet another is to treat morality as a kind of convenient fiction (fictionalism). We tend to think of moral thinking as valuable and useful (e.g., for motivating cooperative behavior), but we can also recognize that it can be harmful (e.g., hindering compromise) and even disastrous (e.g., inspiring support for militaristic propaganda). Would we be better off or worse off if we stopped basing decisions on moral considerations?This is a collection of twelve brand new chapters focused on a critical examination of the options available to the moral error theorist. After a general introduction outlining the topic, explaining key terminology, and offering suggestions for further reading, the chapters address questions like:• Is it true that the more that people are motivated by moral concerns, the more likely it is that society will be elitist, authoritarian, and dishonest?• Is an appeal to moral values a useful tool for helping resolve conflicts, or does it actually exacerbate conflicts?• Would it even be possible to abolish morality from our thinking? • If we were to accept a moral error theory, would it be feasible to carry on believing in morality in everyday contexts?• Might moral discourse be usefully modeled on familiar metaphorical language, where we can convey useful and important truths by uttering falsehoods?• Does moral thinking support or undermine a commitment to feminist goals?• What role do moral judgments play in addressing important decisions affecting climate change?The End of Morality: Taking Moral Abolitionism Seriously is the first book to thoroughly address these and other questions, systematically investigating the harms and benefits of moral thought, and considering what the world might be like without morality.
The End of the Democratic State: Nicos Poulantzas, a Marxism for the 21st Century (Marx, Engels, and Marxisms)
by Jean-Numa Ducange Razmig Keucheyan David BroderThis edited volume takes a close look at Nicos Poulantzas’s thought as a means of understanding the dynamics of the capitalist, neoliberal state in the 21st century. Nicos Poulantzas has left us with one of the most sophisticated theories of the state in the second half of the 20th century. Poulantzas’s influential theory draws inspiration from Marx, Lenin, Weber, and Foucault, among other thinkers, conceiving of the relationship between capitalism and the state as particularly original. This book aims to use Poulantzas’s theory of the capitalist state in order to understand important political and economic trends that have taken place since Poulantzas’s death in 1979. By entering into a dialogue with current Marxist and critical research in diverse fields such as political science, philosophy, sociology, history, and geography, this volume purports to evaluate the actuality of Poulantzas’s thought.
Endosymbiotic Theories of Organelles Revisited: Retrospects and Prospects
by Naoki SatoThis book re-examines the endosymbiotic theory, and presents various related theories and hypotheses since the first proposal in 1905 by a Russian biologist. It also demonstrates that Lynn Margulis’s contribution to the current endosymbiotic is less than sometimes thought, and presents a plausible idea on how the organelles were formed. Explaining that Margulis’s initial work did not intend to show the endosymbiotic origin of chloroplasts and mitochondria, the book discusses their endosymbiotic origin in the light of current biology with the help of clear visual images. Further, by including numerous historical facts and details of phylogenetic analyses using recent genomic data that are largely unknown to many in the field, it offers deep insights into the history of biology, phylogenetic analysis, and the new evolutionary thinking. 2017 was the 50-year anniversary of Margulis’s first paper in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, and 2020 will mark 50 years since the publication her famous work Origin of Eukaryotic Cells, and as such this book offers a timely reconsideration ofthe works of Lynn Margulis and the endosymbiotic origin of organelles.
Engaging Evil: A Moral Anthropology (Methodology & History in Anthropology #36)
by William C. Olsen Thomas J. CsordasAnthropologists have expressed wariness about the concept of evil even in discussions of morality and ethics, in part because the concept carries its own cultural baggage and theological implications in Euro-American societies. Addressing the problem of evil as a distinctly human phenomenon and a category of ethnographic analysis, this volume shows the usefulness of engaging evil as a descriptor of empirical reality where concepts such as violence, criminality, and hatred fall short of capturing the darkest side of human existence.
Engaging Student Voices in Higher Education: Diverse Perspectives and Expectations in Partnership
by Simon Lygo-Baker Ian M. Kinchin Naomi E. WinstoneThis book examines the importance of exploring the varied and diverse perspectives of student experiences. In both academic institutions and everyday discourse, the notion of the ‘student voice’ is an ever-present reminder of the importance placed upon the student experience in Higher Education: particularly in a context where the financial burden of undertaking a university education continues to grow. The editors and contributors explore how notions of the ‘student voice’ as a single, monolithic entity may in fact obscure divergence in the experiences of students. Placing so much emphasis on the ‘student voice’ may lead educators and policy makers to miss important messages communicated – or consciously uncommunicated – through student actions. This book also explores ways of working in partnership with students to develop their own experiences. It is sure to be of interest and value to scholars of the student experience and its inherent diversity.
The Engineering-Business Nexus: Symbiosis, Tension and Co-Evolution (Philosophy of Engineering and Technology #32)
by Steen Hyldgaard Christensen Christelle Didier Martin Meganck Mike Murphy Bernard DelahousseFascinating and compelling in equal measure this volume presents a critical examination of the multilayered relationships between engineering and business. In so doing the study also stimulates ethical reflection on how these relationships either enhance or inhibit strategies to address vital issues of our time. In the context of geopolitical, economic, and environmental tendencies the authors explore the world that we should want to create and the role of the engineer and the business manager in this endeavor. Throughout this volume the authors identify periods of alignment and periods of tension between engineering and business. They look at focal points of the engineering-business nexus related to the development of capitalism. The book explores past and present movements to reshape, reform, or reject this nexus.The volume is informed by questions of importance for industry as well as for higher education. These are: What kinds of conflict arise for engineers in their attempts to straddle both professional and organizational commitments? How should professionals be managed to avoid a clash of managerial and professional cultures? How do engineers create value in firms and corporations? What kinds of tension exist between higher education and industry? What challenges does the neoliberal entrepreneurial university pose for management, faculty, students, society, and industry? Should engineering graduates be ready for work, and can they possibly be? What kinds of business issues are reflected in engineering education curricula, and for what purpose? Is there a limit to the degree of business hybridization in engineering degree programs, and if so, what would be the criterion for its definition? Is there a place in engineering education curricula for reflective critique of assumptions related to business and economic thinking? One ideal of management and control comes to the fore as the Anthropocene - the world transformed into an engineered artefact which includes human existence. The volume raises the question as to how engineering and business together should be considered, given the fact that the current engineering-business nexus remains embedded within an economic model of continual growth. By addressing macro-level issues such as energy policy, sustainable development, globalization, and social justice this study will both help create awareness and stimulate development of self-knowledge among practitioners, educators, and students thereby ultimately addressing the need for better informed citizens to safeguard planet Earth as a human life supporting system.
Engineering Trustworthy Software Systems: 4th International School, SETSS 2018, Chongqing, China, April 7–12, 2018, Tutorial Lectures (Lecture Notes in Computer Science #11430)
by Jonathan P. Bowen Zhiming Liu Zili ZhangThis volume contains lectures on leading-edge research in methods and tools for use in computer system engineering; at the 4th International School on Engineering Trustworthy Software Systems, SETSS 2018, held in April 2018 at Southwest University in Chongqing, China.The five chapters in this volume provide an overview of research in the frontier of theories, methods, and tools for software modelling, design, and verification. The topics covered in these chapter include Software Verification with Whiley, Learning Büchi Automata and Its Applications, Security in IoT Applications, Programming in Z3, and The Impact of Alan Turing: Formal Methods and Beyond. The volume provides a useful resource for postgraduate students, researchers, academics, and engineers in industry, who are interested in theory, methods, and tools for the development of trustworthy software.
English Classes in Slumber: Why Korean Students Sleep in Language Education
by Mun Woo Lee S.-H. Gyemyong AhnThis book explains why some Korean high school students sleep during English classes in spite of the emphasized value of English in their society. It examines how this sleeping-in-class phenomenon can be understood by means of such marginalized students’ emic outlooks on themselves, the target language, their teachers, schools, and society/culture; and by means of the views of teachers who have experienced such in-class sleepers. To understand the phenomenon more holistically, it pursues a multi-disciplinary approach drawing on studies of demotivation and amotivation, psychological needs, and student experiences of schooling, as well as sociocultural theories of learning and agency and of interpersonal dynamics, among others. On the basis of a multi-modal analysis of interview data from the student and teacher participants, it theoretically interprets the phenomenon at the classroom (‘micro-’), school (‘meso-’) and society-culture (‘macro-’) levels. Taking a humanistic/existential approach to education, it subsequently presents a number of cultural actions that it advocates implementing in a situation-sensitive manner to help in-class sleepers and their educational institutions awaken from their chronic slumber. Lastly, it presents practical and theoretical implications for more humanistic pedagogy, and global studies of student disengagement, in English-as-a-foreign-language classes.
Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution: The Egyptian and Syrian Debates
by Elizabeth Suzanne KassabDuring the two decades that preceded the 2011 revolutions in Egypt and Syria, animated debates took place in Cairo and Damascus on political and social goals for the future. Egyptian and Syrian intellectuals argued over the meaning of tanwir, Arabic for “enlightenment,” and its significance for contemporary politics. They took up questions of human dignity, liberty, reason, tolerance, civil society, democracy, and violence. In Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution, Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab offers a groundbreaking analysis of the tanwir debates and their import for the 2011 uprisings.Kassab locates these debates in their local context as well as in broader contemporary political and intellectual Arab history. She argues that the enlightenment they advocated was a form of political humanism that demanded the right of free and public use of reason. By calling for the restoration of human dignity and seeking a moral compass in the wake of the destruction wrought by brutal regimes, they understood tanwir as a humanist ideal. Kassab connects their debates to the Arab uprisings, arguing that their demands bear a striking resemblance to what was voiced on the streets of Egypt and Syria in 2011. Enlightenment on the Eve of Revolution is the first book to document these debates for the Anglophone audience and to analyze their importance for contemporary Egyptian and Syrian intellectual life and politics.
Enlightenment Thought: An Anthology of Sources
by Margaret L. King"Margaret L. King has put together a highly representative selection of readings from most of the more significant—but by no means the most obvious—texts by the authors who made up the movement we have come to call the 'Enlightenment.' They range across much of Europe and the Americas, and from the early seventeenth century until the end of the eighteenth. In the originality of the choice of texts, in its range and depth, this collection offers both wide coverage and striking insights into the intellectual transformation which has done more than any other to shape the world in which we live today. It is simply the best introduction to the subject now available." —Anthony Pagden, UCLA, and author of The Enlightenment and Why It Still Matters Contents:Chronology, IntroductionChapter One - Casting Out Idols: 1620–1697Idols, or false notions: Francis Bacon, The New Instrument (1620)I think, therefore I am: René Descartes, Discourse on Method (1637)God, or Nature: Baruch Spinoza, Ethics (1677)The system of the world: Isaac Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (1687)He searched for truth throughout his life: Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary (1697)Chapter Two - The Learned Maid: 1638–1740A face raised toward heaven: Anna Maria van Schurman, Whether the Study of Letters Befits a Christian Woman (1638)The worlds I have made: Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World (1666)A finer sort of cattle: Bathsua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen (1673)I warn you of the world: Madame de Maintenon, Letter: On the Education of the Demoiselles of Saint-Cyr (August 1, 1686), and Instruction: On the World (1707)The daybreak of your reason: Émilie Du Châtelet, Fundamentals of Physics (1740)Chapter Three - A State of Perfect Freedom: 1689–1695The chief criterion of the True Church: John Locke, Letter on Toleration (1689)Freedom from any superior power on earth: John Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government (1689)A white paper, with nothing written on it: John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689)Let your rules be as few as possible: John Locke, Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)From death, Jesus Christ restores all to life: John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, as Delivered in the Scriptures (1695)Chapter Four - All Things Made New: 1725–1784In the wilderness, they are reborn: Giambattista Vico, The New Science (1725/1730/1744)Without these Names, nothing can be known, Carl Linnaeus, System of Nature (1735)All the clouds at last are lifted: Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, The Successive Advancement of the Human Mind (1750)A genealogical or encyclopedic tree of knowledge: Jean le Rond d’Alembert, Preliminary Discourse (1751)Dare to know! : Immanuel Kant, What Is Enlightenment? (1784)Chapter Five - Mind, Soul, and God: 1740–1779The narrow limits of human understanding: David Hume, An Abstract of a Book Lately Published (1740)The soul is but an empty word: Julien Offray de La Mettrie, Man a Machine (1747)All is reduced to sensation: Claude Adrien Helvétius, On the Mind (1758)An endless web of fantasies and falsehoods: Paul-Henri Thiry, baron d’Holbach, Common Sense (1772)Let each believe that his own ring is real: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Nathan the Wise (1779)Chapter Six - Crush That Infamous Thing: 1733–1764This is the country of sects: Voltaire, Philosophical Letters (1733)Disfigured by myth, until enlightenment comes: Voltaire, The Culture and Spirit of Nations (1756)The best of all possible worlds: Voltaire, Candide (1759)Are we not all children of the same God?: Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance (1763)If a book displeases you, refute it! : Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary (1764)Chapter Seven - Toward the Greater Good: 1748–1776Things must be so ordered that power checks power, Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws (1748)Complete freedom of trade must be ensured: François Quesnay, General Maxims for the Economic Management of an Agricultural Kingdom (1758)The nation's war against the citizen: Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punish
Enlivenment: Toward a Poetics for the Anthropocene (Untimely Meditations #16)
by Andreas WeberA new understanding of the Anthropocene that is based on mutual transformation with nature rather than control over nature. We have been told that we are living in the Anthropocene, a geological era shaped by humans rather than by nature. In Enlivenment, German philosopher Andreas Weber presents an alternative understanding of our relationship with nature, arguing not that humans control nature but that humans and nature exist in a commons of mutual transformation. There is no nature–human dualism, he contends, because the fundamental dimension of existence is shared in what he calls "aliveness." All subjectivity is intersubjectivity. Self is self-through-other. Seeing all beings in a common household of matter, desire, and imagination, an economy of metabolic and economic transformation, is “enlivenment.” This perspective allows us to move beyond Enlightenment-style thinking that strips material reality of any subjectivity.To take this step, Weber argues, we need to supplant the concept of techné with the concept of poiesis as the element that brings forth reality. In a world not divided into things and ideas, culture and nature, reality arises from the creation of relationships and continuous fertile transformations; any thinking in terms of relationships comes about as a poetics. The self is always a function of the whole; the whole is equally a function of the individual. Only this integrated freedom allows humanity to reconcile with the natural world.This first English edition of Enlivenment has been expanded and updated from the German edition.